Prue Purser and Lorraine Owen, two of the Archives volunteers, have been recording the collages of those who attended three Diocesan Synods. The attendees – bishop, clergy and laity, were photographed as a record of the event. The work has been undertaken because the 1875 images are fading. This is a result of not only heat and light, which affects all photographs but also due to poor fixing in the original chemical process.
The result, is that individuals and parishes no longer have to imagine what their Clergy and Synod representatives looked like on those dates. You can see them age, grow beards, grow longer beards or moustaches or lengthen their sideburns. Some even shave off their beards. Wing collars and high stiff collars are all the rage amongst the laity, while the Clergy hide their collars behind a variety of cassocks or even more daringly sport a suit jacket.
For the other volunteers, Lynette Moore, Sarah Lees-Jeffries and Colin Watson, who are busy indexing Parish Registers, it is a chance to match the individual with the handwriting of the individual who has either caused them endless transcription worry, or delighted them with clarity and consistency.
Caption Left to Right:
Hon. John Barton Arundel Acland Synodsman for Geraldine (1875); Rev’d William Thomas Pochin Winter, Vicar of Courtney (1888); Rev’d William Augustus Pascoe, Vicar of Avonside (1907)
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